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It's been quite a while since I have posted here. There have been lots of things going around. As some of you know, I was working in the SharePoint Developer Support team, and some amongst you, who have called in might know that there were huge volumes due to the never-before numbers of MOSS deployments. My team was completely swamped with what was happening due to this. In the midst of all of that, I was interviewing within Microsoft for a position in Redmond. There are a number of articles and discussions out there on the internet that talk about various experiences of people interviewing with Microsoft. Suffice to say that, being already an employee did not put me on a pedestal and I was put through the same rigors as anyone else while I was interviewing. This experience was something that I really liked about the company. It does not matter whether you are an existing employee or not, unless you have the required skills needed for the job you are applying for, there is no way they will let you in.
During this process I interviewed with all the teams in the Office Server space as well as with some other teams and the experience was really an eye-opener. There is a standard format to these interviews. You (as in the candidate) searches for a job opening, looks at something that fits what he/she is looking for, and then sends out an email to the recruiter or the hiring manager with a resume and asking for an informational interview. An informational interview at this stage is a staging talk between the candidate and the hiring manager wherein the candidate gets a deep look at what exactly the job description said. Also, at this point, the hiring manager would generally schedule a technical screening, to take a look at whether or not it's worth the effort to schedule a full round of interviews. Of course once this is done, you are looking at the real deal - which is the actual interview process. Typically for the programming position that I was applying for, there would be anywhere between 4-8 different individual interviews in a full "loop" as they call it. Each interview is at least an hour long and has a set pattern too. There are a lot of instances when potential candidates are flown to Redmond for the interviews, however in my case, since I was already at a Microsoft site, we utilized the power of technology to work through the interviews. I would book a video conference room at my end and the recruiters would book a video conference room in Redmond. Once the connection would be established, each of the interviewers would walk-in and grill me over the course of the next hour and a half. One thing that really worked in my favor was having a conference room that had a white board facing the screen/camera. It really eased out a lot since, I could write out code or explain my thought process using figures/diagrams and they could actually see what I was writing compared to using a pen and notepad. The interviews would generally go over as, the first 15 minutes walking through my resume, then a programming problem which would take up about 40 minutes or so followed by more questions on why I did something or why I chose not to do something in the code. This would be followed up about 5-10 minutes for me to ask them questions on what they do and what potentially I would be doing.
After about two or three months of interviewing I finally found a "mutual perfect fit" team that I was excited to work with. Then started the tedious process of paper work, going back and forth over the offer, working through the visa issues, the travel itinerary and then the actual relocation. It was quite enlightening to understand during this period that each of the individual verticals within Microsoft operated as independent organizations all being part of one parent company. So, while I was in India, I rolled up into Microsoft India R&D which encompassed Services, R&D, Engineering, Sales and Evangelism. However, once I accepted the offer, I realized that I would now be rolling into Microsoft Corp which kind of encompassed almost everything. However, since Microsoft India R&D was a independent subsidiary, all finances, accounts and in general everything was separate and apart from email address and employee number nothing was being transferred. So when I was making the move, the India organization treated this as an employee resigning and leaving, and the US organization treated this as a new employee joining. This definitely was a very interesting process.
Back in March just after I had got back from my TechReady trip me and my wife Ketaki had found out that we were expecting our first child. So this was definitely something that we would have to factor in when we were relocating. There were obviously travel restrictions on how late into the pregnancy she would be allowed to travel and I wanted to make sure that we moved over to Redmond well in time to get ourselves settled in and with some time on our hands till the baby was due. She was working with HP at the time and decided to take time off from work to lend a hand with the whole relocation thingy.
Going through the visa process was a fun experience since the legal had taken care of practically everything and all we had to do was to show up and answer some questions. Of course, with me, nothing can be smooth sailing for long. We landed in New Delhi on the morning of the visa interview and proceeded to the US consulate. The US consulate in New Delhi is heavily barricaded with a number of security checks before you actually enter the visa processing centre. On the outside they have this huge queue to check if all documents are in order. Most of the people are sent back from here. Once this is done you go through a huge security gate that makes airport security checks seem like a joke. Inside, there is another line for finger printing and then the last long wait for the actual interview at the window. When we got there at around 11:45 for a 12:00 PM interview, there was this huge line on the outside for the document check. I had just resigned to the fact of a long wait when out of nowhere, I tripped and fell while getting off the sidewalk. There was a small trench like gap between where the side walk ended and the road began, and I had somehow managed to get my foot trapped in that gap, twisted it violently and crashed on the tar in full view of everyone there. For a moment I was writhing with pain, and had no sense of what was happening around me. From amongst the crowd this lady came up to us, and offered me some water, and actually ran back to her car parked some distance back to get me a pain reliever gel and a crepe bandage. Before we could ask her who she was, she had disappeared just as suddenly as she had appeared. Both me and Ketaki were just left wondering who she was – and also thinking there are indeed some kind hearted souls in this world. Thank you Mysterious Lady for helping us out during that brief moment.
I was visibly limping after I got up, with my ankle looking like a soccer ball. The guards saw this and just let us through to the finger printing. Some good did come off the pain that I was in. Instead of waiting in line for an hour and a half we were just ushered in to the fingerprinting and then onward to the interview. We were out in a flat 30 minutes. We took a flight back the same evening. In a couple of days I had received my passport at my office and Ketaki had received hers at the home. We were all set, now we only needed the plane tickets. All of this was June. During the same period both of us were running about getting everything else done, we needed to close the rental agreement that we had for the place we were living in, sell the Opel Corsa we had, and get all our belongings packed and shipped. The relocation guys were tremendously helpful in arranging for a packing and moving company to just come over one day pack everything into neat boxes and send it out. After the packing was done, and the apartment was practically just four walls standing, we took the next flight out to Mumbai where we planned to spend a couple of days meeting our friends and family. The relocation specialist I was dealing with did an excellent job of getting us the flight itinerary that worked for us as well as getting us the temporary accommodation at such short notice. On the 19th of July at about 3:00 AM we boarded a BA flight from Mumbai to Heathrow. A eight hour really taxing and boring halt at Heathrow and we were onward for our direct connection to Sea-Tac. We arrived at about 5:30 local time, completely exhausted. The total trip time from boarding to alighting was close to 26 hours. Under normal circumstances that would have been bearable, but with a 7 ½ months pregnant wife, it was really taxing. A friend had come over to receive us and take us to the temp housing. We just crashed on getting there.
We had arrived in Bellevue/Redmond on the 20th of July.

 

~Harsh

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